Wednesday, April 30, 2014

In my book Hoosier School Heist, I
detail the corporate/theocratic billionaires who are out to destroy Indiana
public education, and the same people in my book are behind Bob Behning’s
reelection campaign.

In fact, the Hoosiers for Economic Growth PAC, founded by an Amway/Besty
Devos/Walmart/Overstock.com/hedge fund front group, just
gave Behning $45,000,
two days ago. Hoosiers for Economic Growth slid him
$25,000 at the beginning of this month, too (page
4).Back in 2013, the super PAC handed
Behning $2,000 (page
5). This PAC is where Walmart and DeVos' American Federation for Children unloads its money.

Bush family friend Al Hubbard, emails show, was
working with DeVos and Jeb Bush operatives even before Bennett knew the game,
and Hubbard also has thrown $5,000 (page
to 2) to Behning’s reelection campaign. Hubbard also gave the Hoosiers for Economic Growth PAC $75,000 recently.

The resort mega-millionaire Christel DeHaan,
notorious for being the Tony Bennett campaign funder Tony Bennett rigged the
charter school grade for, gave $10,000on April 19, 2014.

TheresaRooney, whose father was the father of the Indiana voucher
movement, has also tossed Behning $5,000 (page
2).

A national expert on the corporate and theocratic assault against public education, Doug Martin is the author of Hoosier School Heist, the book which exposes the corruption, scandals, and campaign financing behind so-called school reform in Indiana and elsewhere. OrderHoosier School Heist and get the facts.

With absolute fealty to Wall Street and the vulture philanthropists who pay for the Governor's allegiance to New York's 21st Century segregated cultural sterilization testing camps, Cuomo dares not touch the urban sprawl of charter school programs for the poor, which are based, of course, on round the clock test prep. After all, how else, without test scores, could these dehumanizing hellholes produce the numbers that are used to justify the rampant human rights abuses and behavioral neutering that occur, Orwellian-like, in the name of educational equality.

As a bone thrown to parents fed up with the miseducative and abusive testing practices, Cuomo signed a law earlier this year to limit test prep everywhere except charter schools, even as he and the Legislature doubled down on the rotted Common Core as the next testing delivery system for the predatory test industry led by Pearson. The question now becomes how do policymakers break the habit of these hooked users of this new e-cigarette of the toxic testing business. It will certainly take more than unmonitored statutes of sweet sounding words by New York City's new Chancellor of Schools.

INT:Let me ask you
this question:if I were a friend of
yours interested in teaching at a KIPP school and I asked you what was it like
there, what would you tell me?

R:I would say honestly,
I’ve had that question before.I would
never ever – I told them I wouldn’t wish that experience on my worst
enemy.That’s exactly what I say every
time--I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.And I have no enemies but I wouldn’t wish it if I had an enemy.I wouldn’t put anyone through that.Anyone.It was probably – you give up your life and not only do you give up your
life you’re giving it up for nothing. It’s not like you’re seeing results.It’s not like you’re being rewarded
appropriately.I mean there’s no reward
for that type of work.It’s just like
you’re being used up and thrown out.It’s like they’re going to use you up as much as you can take until you
realize okay, I’m being used, and then you get out.My friends quit asking now in [city name deleted], everybody knows what KIPP is like now so I don’t get that question much
anymore.I have a lot of people who
would say they would never go to KIPP, never.I have a lot of friends that went to KIPP and left.

From Monty Neill: **Media Advisory** 26 Teachers and Staff of International High School at Prospect Heights refuse to give NYC ELA Performance Assessment Test WHEN: Thursday, May 1, 2014, 7:45-8:20am,

WHERE: International High School at Prospect Heights, 883 Classon Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11225

WHAT: Teachers will hold a press conference to announce their refusal to administer the NYC ELA Performance Assessment. 26 teachers and staff at Prospect Heights International High School are refusing to administer a new assessment that is part of the new teacher evaluation system pushed by Bloomberg’s DOE and the UFT last spring. 50% of parents have opted their children out of the test. The high school serves almost exclusively recently arrived English Language Learners.

WHY: The test was constructed and formatted without any thought for the 14% of New York City students for whom English is not their first language. The level of English used in the pre-test administered in the Fall was so far above the level of our beginner ELLs that it provided little to no information about our students’ language proficiency or the level of their academic skills.

Furthermore, the test was a traumatic and demoralizing experience for students. Many students, after asking for help that teachers were not allowed to give, simply put their heads down for the duration. Some students even cried.

Teachers at Prospect Heights are drawing a line with this test. Standardized, high stakes test dominate our schools, distort our curriculum and make our students feel like failures. This test serves no purpose for the students, and ultimately only hurts them.

26 Teachers have signed a letter to Chancellor Farina declaring that they will not give the exam. The letter expresses gratitude for Farina’s immediate turn around of the DOE’s attitude toward teachers, and asks that the Chancellor reconsider the use of the NYC ELA Performance Assessment with English Language Learners.

WHO: Teachers and support staff from the International High School at Prospect Heights.

Some of the International High Schools in NYC are part of the Performance Standards Consortium and are not required to give the Math Regents exam; instead, students graduate by performance tasks -see http://www.performanceassessment.org.

Rosie and Emily Giles are active MOREistas. See video <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1a9Gg37nC3A&feature=share&list=UU9iVb99ewF1omA6LbPUWEOg&index=1> of Rosie at the Change the Stakes rally last week where in an off the cuff interview she elucidates the thinking of more and more teachers. Much of the test flux has come from elementary schools so it is important that this is coming from high school - there is a chain of international schools here in NYC that are linked and at some point this may spread.

"Bill Gates's foundation pays educators to pose alternatives to union orthodoxies regarding seniority and test scores." "Two other Gates-financed groups, Educators for Excellence and Teach Plus, have helped amplify the voices of newer teachers as an alternative to the official views of the unions. Last summer, members of several such groups had a meeting at the foundation’s offices in Washington." — New York Times

Although it's being debated vigorously in United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA), let's leave the discussion about UTLA online voting aside momentarily. Let's even ignore the all too transparent reasons why Teach Plus—a member of the nonprofit industrial complex (NPIC)—is pushing for it, and is willing to host dinners and drinks at four different restaurants.* Instead, why don't the online voting petition wielding UTLA members ask their Teach Plus "allies" some important questions. Here are a few of my questions for these supposedly unaligned teachers to ask the Teach Plus cadre as conversation starters:

How do you feel about being associated with an organization that was intimately involved with this tragic incident?

Often the decisions about which teachers will stay and which will go are made by new principals who may be very good, but don't know the old staff. "We had several good teachers asked to leave," said Heather Gorman, a fourth-grade teacher who will be staying at Blackstone Elementary here, where 38 of 50 teachers were removed. "Including my sister who's been a special-ed teacher 22 years."

How do you feel about Teach Plus' founder, Celine Coggins', close ties with the fringe-right The Hoover Institution at Stanford University? Coggins is also on the advisory board of the dubious National Council for Teaching Quality (NCTQ) along with folks like Rick Hess, Joel Klein, Michelle Rhee, Eric Hanushek, and Stefanie Sanford. NCTQ is funded in part by the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the Laura and John Arnold Foundation, the Searle Freedom Trust, and the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation.

Robert D. Skeels is a social justice writer, public education advocate, and immigrant rights activist. He lives, works, writes, and organizes in Los Angeles with his wife and cats. Robert holds a BA in Classical Civilization from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), and is a Juris Doctor candidate at Peoples College of Law (PCL). A US Navy Veteran, he is a proud member of Veterans for Peace. A student of Liberation Theology and Paulo Freire's work, Robert devotes much time towards volunteer work for 12 step, church, homeless advocacy, and grassroots groups. Robert's articles and essays appear in publications including Jacobin, Truthout, CounterPunch, Dissident Voice, Schools Matter, Daily Censored, Regeneración, K12NN, LA Progressive, and The Los Angeles Daily News. In 2013 Robert ran for the LAUSD School Board against a billionaire funded corporate reform candidate, finishing second in a field of five, with over 5,200 votes.